iPhone 4S Breaks Carrier Records and Expectations

After allowing the dust to settle from Friday’s launch of the iPhone 4S, we are now collecting announcements from carriers on launch day. AT&T, Apple’s longtime iPhone partner, announced that they doubled their record for activations in a single day.

Meanwhile, Apple’s newest U.S. carrier partner, Sprint, also announced that the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S “device family” broke one-day sales for the company by 1PM EDT. In fact, Sprint’s head product chief noted that this was the “best ever day of sales in retail, web and telesales for a device family in Sprint history.”, and claims this is due to Sprint’s offering of a “truly unlimited” data plan.

Of course, Sprint is the only carrier to offer unlimited data to new customers. Both Verizon and AT&T only allow customers access to “unlimited” data plans to those who signed up for them when they were first available on those respective networks (they have since been replaced with tiered data plans). Plus, according to reports this is an all-or-nothing gamble on Sprint’s part. I hope it pays off, and it looks like it might.